THUNDER: Trenton drops pitcher's duel to Bowie

By
Josh Norris, The Trentonian

Friday, May 17, 2013

TRENTON — Before Friday’s game, Thunder manager Tony Franklin talked about his team’s needed defensive improvement. Two errors and a misjudged fly ball came back to bite them in their last game at Arm & Hammer Park, and entering the evening their 51 errors were second from the bottom in the Eastern League.

No. 52, committed by second baseman Casey Stevenson in the sixth inning, not only obscured what had been a fantastic pitchers’ duel, it ultimately led to a Thunder loss, 2-1, to the Baysox on a brilliant evening in the capital.

Danny Burawa opened the sixth by issuing free passes to Ty Kelly and Niuman Romero, then got Caleb Joseph – the brother of Yankees prospect Corban Joseph -- to whiff. Henry Urrutia followed with a bouncer to second just slowly enough to keep the Baysox out of an inning-ending double play.

Then came Waring, who poked Burawa’s 0-1 offering in Stevenson’s direction, where it ricocheted off the second baseman’s glove and into shallow right field, giving Kelly plenty of time to scoot home with the go-ahead score.

Before the sixth inning, the story of the night was the epic show being put on by a pair of heralded right-handers, Trenton’s Jose Ramirez and Bowie’s Kevin Gausman. Trenton fans are familiar with Ramirez by now – the skinny righty with the electric heater, the devastating change-up and the rapidly improving slider.

And if they weren’t familiar with his work, Ramirez gave the nearly 6,000 fans on hand a loud introduction on Friday.

He spun five innings of one-run ball – the only blemish a solo home run from Joseph in the fourth inning – and fanned seven against one walk. In four appearances with the Thunder, Ramirez has fanned 33 against five walks over 24 innings.

Gausman, as Franklin likes to say, comes with plenty of credentials of his own. The No. 4 pick in last year’s draft out of LSU, the Coloradan threw his fastball with a couple of degrees more heat than his counterpart on Friday. Like Ramirez, he couples his hard stuff with a power change-up that is effective to both left- and right-handed hitters.

That proved especially true on Friday, when Gausman said he realized early that the Thunder’s righty hitters were just as susceptible to his offspeed stuff.

“My strength is fastball, change-up, so going into the game I knew I was going to throw a lot of change-ups to left-handed hitters,” he explained. “That was the pitcher for me the entire night, and honestly I threw it to the right-handed hitters, too. I think that was something that they really weren’t expecting.”

Neil Medchill, who carded one of just four Thunder hits on Friday, had high praise for Gausman afterward.

“Really good arm,” said Neil Medchill, who reached Gausman for a single. “I knew going in he was going to be throwing a lot of fastballs, throwing hard. (He was) down in the zone, commanded it well. He’s real special.”

Slade Heathcott got Trenton’s only rally started with a ringing triple to center field off Gausman, then scored when he hustled home on Ali Castillo’s grounder to the hill.

Trenton didn’t do any better after Gausman left. Lefty Jason Gurka spun three perfect innings and fanned four – including Heathcott to end the game – to make Gausman’s work hold up.